I used to feel similarly whenever people would say "begs the question" to mean "raises a question." But now I've just given up. It's more common for people to mess this one up than not.

This lossy mingling of expressions that sound similar is a natural process always present in the evolution of a language. Giving up is a correct and healthy response imo.

"Begging the question" is a great example - its intended meaning as a specific fallacy descriptor lose to face-value interpretations that are "wrong" but also extremely fair for somebody to make. All this means is that "begging the question" is a weak name for the fallacy, because if you don't know what it means, a wrong assumption is easily available and contextually often seems to fit.

The language crushing out these expressions is a feature. Better all around to say the argument is circular or it assumes the conclusion. Doing those things may _actually_ "raise questions" as well as "begging the question" which makes things even worse.

It's not the fault of the casual language users that this expression is poorly understood, it's just bad naming in the first place.

To be fair, the phrase "begging the question" makes almost no sense from a modern English perspective- according to Wikipedia, it's already a bad translation of a Latin phrase that's tied pretty closely to a specific debate format.

By contrast, the colloquial use feels like an abbreviation of the implicit phrase "it begs for the question to be asked", which makes so much more sense than the "correct" meaning that if I'm being perfectly honest, I'd rather use it.

I like Wikipedia's alternate name for the fallacy: "assuming the conclusion", because it explains what's actually happening.

Literally is literally figurative and only figuratively literal, anything remotely unsustainable is a "Ponzi scheme", and factoids are somehow facts instead of fictions... *sigh*